This fascinating exploration of the early modern world, from the author of The Discovery of America and Other Myths, focuses on a single year as a window into a restless, expansive era. From ...(Read More)

If ever a troublesome time warp should send you back to the 13th century BC, this is the only guide you'll need to navigate your way around the Egypt of Ramesses the Great. Sail up the Nile and visit ...(Read More)

Throughout a tumultuous half-century the Borgias held center stage in the Italian Renaissance as ruthless popes, statesmen, warriors, lovers, and political adventurers. Five centuries after their ...(Read More)

Between the death of Richard III on Bosworth Field in 1485 and the execution of Charles I, after the civil wars of 1642–48, England was ruled largely by two dynasties. The Tudors won the crown on the ...(Read More)

When Henry VIII turned against Rome over the issue of divorce, and adopted the Protestant religion, he changed the course of British history; by 1600, England had become a different nation in which ...(Read More)

England's 1707 political union with Scotland effectively established Great Britain, a power whose rapid expansion would cause mutual mistrust in relation to Europe. Internal discord remained in the ...(Read More)

How do we get from the polis to the police? Or from Odysseus’s sirens to an ambulance’s? The legacy of ancient Greece and Rome has been imitated, misunderstood, and reworked by every Western culture ...(Read More)

This fun little book is a boon for former students who are now a little foggy on why Cicero was such a big name in ancient Rome. The author of I Used to Know That, Caroline Taggart gives us ...(Read More)

Fabled for her sexual allure and cunning intelligence, Cleopatra VII of Egypt has fascinated generations of admirers and detractors since her tumultuous life ended in suicide in 30 BC. This lavishly ...(Read More)

An accessible guide to the language and literature of ancient Rome, this book provides the basics of the Latin language, clearly explained, with exercises to test your progress. Here too are excerpts ...(Read More)

Following his biographies of Marco Polo and Magellan (as well as of Louis Armstrong, Al Capone, Irving Berlin, and James Agee), Laurence Bergreen here gives us one of the most accomplished, ...(Read More)

In 312 AD, Constantine—one of four Roman emperors ruling a divided empire—marched on Rome to establish his sole control of its western half. Having had a vision of a glowing cross in the sky, ...(Read More)